\u201cWe are extremely short-staffed on the medical registrar front this weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf anybody has worked with us before, is now out working elsewhere and wants to make some extra cash on the weekend, please reach out.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can discuss money and number of hours, it\u2019s all negotiable.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Resident Doctors\u2019 Association told RNZ that cover has now been found, but the social media post raises questions about how the hospital got to that point in the first place.<\/p>\n
National secretary Dr Deborah Powell said Tauranga Hospital was down more than a quarter of their medical registrars over the long weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re about 10 down out of a complement of 35,\u201d Powell said.<\/p>\n
Powell said there had been a real level of fear among staff. <\/p>\n
\u201cMedical is where all of the acutely unwell heart attacks, the strokes, the pneumonias, you name it, rolls in.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese people are seriously unwell, and the medical registrars, who are the vacant shifts, they are the guys who receive these people in an acute state and get them sorted out.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy have we got to Thursday of a long weekend, and you don\u2019t have cover for the weekend? It\u2019s very much last minute,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am aware they introduced a new roster system and it\u2019s not working well, but the guys tell me that this is known about and they just haven\u2019t acted promptly enough to get it sorted.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tauranga Mayor Mah\u00e9 Drysdale said a staff shortage going into the long weekend was a concern.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s important to realise that just because it\u2019s a long weekend, that doesn\u2019t stop the sickness and injuries happening, it happens irrespective of whether it\u2019s a holiday or not,\u201d Drysdale said.<\/p>\n
RNZ asked Health NZ for an interview on the issue, and put direct questions to the agency on what caused the shortage and how much it was going to cost to fix.<\/p>\n
They sent back a statement from its Bay of Plenty group director of operations, Sarah Fenwick.<\/p>\n
\u201cTauranga Hospital has experienced some roster pressures for the coming weekend but these have been addressed,\u201d Fenwick said.<\/p>\n
It was unclear just how the shortage was fixed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a challenging time of year for medical registrar recruitment, with some staff leaving to commence training opportunities overseas and winter illness also placing pressure on staffing levels.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fenwick said they had successfully recruited for their current vacancies, with new registrars due to start in August, September and October.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe are extremely short-staffed on the medical registrar front this weekend. \u201cIf anybody has worked with us before,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[33524,27129,138,11728,38268,2241,2190,111,139,69,1523,14182,1516,1227,4767],"class_list":["post-523448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-avoids","tag-blackwell","tag-business","tag-critical","tag-finn","tag-hospital","tag-long","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-over","tag-shortage","tag-staff","tag-tauranga","tag-weekend"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}